Prior to the present invention, there have been various inventions patented which are adapted for the use of ice in order to by-pass the normal refrigeration cooling equipment a part of typical air conditioners, but such have been large and bulky and far from efficient, and rarely of a size that might be considered truly portable in nature. One portable unit is found in U.S. Pat. No. 2,170,993, in which air conduits are passed through cooled water in which refrigeration coils or ice are located to cool the water which cools the coils and air within them which is pumped directly to the exterior area to be air-conditioned. Although not of a size and purpose to be portable, the air conditioner of U.S. Pat. No. 2,469,259 segregates ice from water circulated through an air-circulation space traveling (extending) horizontally, the water conduits extending vertically across the path of horizontal flow of air to be cooled. Then there is the U.S. Pat. No. 1,943,127 which discloses a unit alleged to be portable, of a diverse mechanism, and which as a matter of fact requires a large wagon to carry the same and could hardly be considered portable in the conventional sense of the word.
A matter not readily apparent from a study of the patents above-noted is the factual lack of cooling efficiency as has been experimentally determined by the present inventor in the constructing of analagous systems, in the arriving at the present invention, such being most critical in view of the need to extend the effective life of any quantity of ice that may be utilized for a predetermined period of cooling during an automobile trip, for example. The greater the cooling efficiency, and the less wasted cooling and avoidance of over-cooling, the longer the life of the ice utilized to effect the cooling.